Rock Steady: Dries Van Noten’s Glittering Ear Cuffs and Marcel Waves

Backstage before the Dries Van Noten show, models Julia Nobis and Tilda Lindstam were feeling giddy, laughingly pretending to dance with one another beneath the gilded ceilings of the Hôtel de Ville. It was a fitting metaphor for the day’s theme: “It’s Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. That kind of mood . . . only touched by Dries,” said makeup artist Peter Philips backstage. He had just finished gluing dozens of irregularly shaped pieces of rock crystal costume jewelry up the length of Lindstam’s earlobe into a flashing makeshift mosaic, placing them with a pair of tweezers.

Only a tightly edited group of nine models were selected for the high-impact look. “The idea came from the big crystal collars and accessories in the show,” he said, gesturing toward the dressing area, where twinkling necklaces and Swarovski-strung sandals sat in neat rows awaiting their runway moment. “At the same time, a lot of the girls were wearing menswear-inspired suits and pants.” In keeping with that masculine-feminine mix, “the [makeup] had to be something girly, but not too girly. Conceptual but, of course, with a Belgian twist.”

At the fitting a few days before, said Philips, he had first experimented with adhering those glittering ornamental pieces around the eyes. “We played around with them above and below the [lids]. It was cool, but it had been done before,” he said of eventually making his way to the ear.

To make sure those above-the-neck statement pieces stayed on display, he kept the rest of the face simple with a matte-finish foundation; full brows; and a soft, abstract slash of black pencil just beneath the lower lashes (a nod to the way stage dancers traditionally do their eye makeup). Likewise, “We’re keeping the hair soft and tucked behind one ear,” said backstage pro Paul Hanlon, who created a sweeping marcel wave across the forehead. “It’s a very loose Old Hollywood reference, nothing too literal,” he said of creating a soft bend in the hair using Frédéric Fekkai mousse and a curling iron, then setting it in place with Bumble and Bumble Styling Spray. “This is Dries, you know, so there always needs to be a little bit of reality in the mix.”